One way of reading the novel is to see the myths of the South slowly revealed to be as rotten as the corpse of Addie Bundren. How do the desires of each family member reveal in different ways this sense of despair and dissolution? Consider, for example, Anse's false teeth (and new wife), Dewey Dell's failed abortion, Darl's 'madness,' Cash's lost tools, and Jewel's bartered horse.
Monday, April 28, 2014
As I Lay Dying #2
Despair and desolation:
One way of reading the novel is to see the myths of the South slowly revealed to be as rotten as the corpse of Addie Bundren. How do the desires of each family member reveal in different ways this sense of despair and dissolution? Consider, for example, Anse's false teeth (and new wife), Dewey Dell's failed abortion, Darl's 'madness,' Cash's lost tools, and Jewel's bartered horse.
One way of reading the novel is to see the myths of the South slowly revealed to be as rotten as the corpse of Addie Bundren. How do the desires of each family member reveal in different ways this sense of despair and dissolution? Consider, for example, Anse's false teeth (and new wife), Dewey Dell's failed abortion, Darl's 'madness,' Cash's lost tools, and Jewel's bartered horse.
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When Addie dies, each of the characters deal with their grief in different ways: Cash becomes meticulous to detail, Jewel becomes distant and Vardaman questions everything, not exactly understanding the whole ordeal. Throughout the course of the novel, each character comes to term with the fact that a member of their family has deceased, not necessarily in ways that the readers would have expected.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, when Anse bartered Jewel's horse for a pack of mules, the reader was able to rationalize that Jewel ran away, for it was an action that fit his isolationist characterization. However, it was a shock when the mules were given to Anse because Jewel had left the horse. It showed a change in Jewel, most likely brought on by the death of his mother and the coming to terms of his grief. The readers finally saw that Jewel had changed when the once mother-hating child saved the coffin from the burning barn. No one had told him to do so, showing that he had actually wanted to save it.
Darl seemed to be rational about the death of his mother, a woman who he loved dearly. We, as readers, trusted him to tell us the truth about everything, with him being the only one with a seemingly "level head." Death changes many people. As the novel took its course, we saw this character take a turn for the worse. With the beginning of his downward spiral being when he asked Jewel who his true father was, the readers saw him burn the barn that contained his mother's coffin and become committed to a mental institution. This character truly made us question the events in the novel, due to the fact that we took him for his word and trusted his narration over those of the other characters.
Anse, at the beginning, seemed like he loved Addie from day one. He did not seem like the type who would pick up a new wife right after he buried the love of his life. However, death changed him also, like it did all the rest. It was quite the shock to the readers to see that Anse had found a new wife, right after Addie had been buried, because he was so careful about not disrespecting his dead wife. This seems to be the ultimate disrespectful act, more so than Darl and Jewel delivering something for Tull or Dewey Dell bringing cakes to sell in town on the way to Jefferson. The act was shocking, showing quite the change in this seemingly unchangeable character.
Finally, Cash, in the end, emerged as the neutral and "level headed" character of the novel, with Darl in a mental institution. Once the meticulous and factual carpenter whose narrations were hard to understand and basically meaningless to the plot line, he became someone who the readers could take at his word. Throughout the text, his narrations became longer and more in-depth, actually giving information about the family, not just the bevel of the coffin. Death made him become more verbose than he was before, for before Addie's death he had just been working on her coffin.
As the characters go more south, more information is revealed about the Bundren family. No longer do they appear to be the ideal family, for everything seems to go wrong for them: the bridges being out, the buzzards following them, the death of the mules and even more. It seems that as the more things go wrong, the more the family members change, showing their true colors.
Many of the remaining Bundrens are portrayed as selfish and disrespectful by the novel's end. Addie herself is characterized as such. Her choice never to tell her children she loved them and her opinion that motherhood is a curse rather than a blessing shows her own selfishness and lack of affection toward her family.
ReplyDeleteAnse, who was so careful to respect Addie's wishes to be buried in Jefferson, ends up buying himself new teeth and remarrying moments after burying his dead wife. Anse took money from his family and sold his farm equipment to complete the journey to Jefferson. His actions appear selfless at first, but after he takes money from his daughter and remarries so quickly, the reader if left to wonder whether he was respecting Addie's wishes or using her death as a way to fulfill his own dreams.
Cash's thoughts are brief, unfinished, and detached from the action of the novel, as if he cannot bring himself to think of his own loss and instead must focus on the task he has been assigned. After losing his tools and suffering a broken leg, he approaches the action in the novel with the same logic with which he thought about building the coffin, and becomes the most coherent narrator. This change in Cash is a more positive development in his character, and portrays his acceptance that his mother is gone.
Darl's development throughout the novel is destructive. His rationalization of his mother's death is that since her state of being is now "was" rather than "is", his state of being and sense of self has been lost too. As time passes he begins to question the morality of his mother's corpse being kept out of the ground, seeing it as a selfish act rather than as the selfless journey the trip was intended to be. In an act of desperation he burns the barn the coffin is kept in to the ground. Darl equates the loss of his mother with the loss of his own identity - when she dies, he ceases to exist.
Jewel is hardened against his family and the death of his mother, and shows no emotion other than varying degrees of aggression. Nevertheless, he turns into a caring character, going so far to sell the horse he worked so hard to buy and run into a burning barn to save the corpse of the mother he never loved. Despite his rough exterior, Jewel gradually proves to the reader that he does have a heart and cares for his family. He and Cash are the two Bundrens that show a positive development as the novel goes on.
Dewey Dell is selfish and equates birth with death; she is essentially a mold of her mother. She is so distraught over her unwanted pregnancy that she has no thought to spare over her dead mother. Though she states she wishes she had time to mourn her, Dewey Dell cannot spare another moment of her energy toward anything else. She becomes distrusting of all men in the novel and hides much-needed money from her father so she can get an abortion, which is unsuccessful. Her future is bleak and hopeless by the novel's end, and her grief for Addie's death is unresolved.
Finally, Vardaman addresses the loss of his mother with denial and confusion from the moment she dies. He equates her loss with the death of a fish he caught and soon believes his mother was that fish. Vardaman also goes from drilling into the coffin to allow his mother to breathe to believing Addie is not really dead and the woman in the coffin is not his mother. His actions, similar to Cash's first responses, are those of denial, and his grief, like Dewey Dell's, is never concluded.
"One way of reading the novel is to see the myths of the South slowly revealed to be as rotten as the corpse of Addie Bundren." Interestingly enough, another way of reading the novel is to see the pursuits and endeavors of the Bundren family also slowly reveal to be as rotten as the corpse of their mother. The process of decomposition is really just a change of state. It's symbolic of the change of of the Bundren family itself- each character changes and develops in their own way into something different.
ReplyDeleteBy the end of the novel, Darl's sense of existence- which was so prominent at the premise of the novel that his profound perception put people off- erodes so far away with the death of his mother that he must be committed to an insane asylum. The conflict tears him up so much that he aims to resolve the predicament through destruction.
Meanwhile, Dewey self-centered concern for herself becomes increasingly strong as the novel progresses. Her own sense of self becomes so strong that it transforms from something potentially healthy (which Darl lacks) so pure selfishness. Her grief over the loss of her mother is neither resolved nor fully realized to begin with.
Vardaman's sense of reality and self exists somewhere between Darl's and Dewey's, and remains generally constant. His image of his mother as a fish, which is both childish and poignant, is even briefly reinforced when he sees his own mother's coffin swimming in the river. But as the story progresses past the initial conflict, his surreal image of his mother begins to develop into something more mature- and in this sense, we see both Vardaman's character growth and his actual, physical and mental development. His denial begins to erode away, like his mother's own body.
Cash and Jewel develop into the two only stable characters in the entire book. The quest to bury their mother influences them positively, and alters their character for the better.
This is Annette Deion (sent from brother's account)
ReplyDeleteWhen I first began reading this book, I had initial feelings of sympathy for the Bundrens, since Addie, their mother was dying. I could understand some of the “undesirable” qualities from some of the characters, such as Jewel’s bitterness and Anse’s stubbornness, since I gave them the benefit of the doubt and thought that it was their mother’s death that was causing them to act this way. However, well into the novel after Addie dies, we begin to see the true desires of each family member, and how even Addie herself was not a good person. Anse has been stubborn throughout the whole novel, but when he introduces his idea of getting new teeth, he seems selfish and disrespectful to Addie. His total disrespect is proven when he finds a new wife to replace Addie at the end. Personally, I believe that it is too soon to find a new wife, but Anse was in no mourning. Dewey Dell, not the brightest character in the book, has been hiding her secret about her pregnancy from the whole family, although she knows that Darl knows. When she attempts to get an abortion and fails, we see the mindset of her character. She does not understand that she is responsible and accountable for her past actions, and that getting an abortion would simply be killing off another future Bundren. When it comes to Darl, he always avoided difficult situations by walking around them, instead of going right through like Jewel. To me, he seemed to be the smartest Bundren, since he had the most descriptive and fluent narration, and I did think he was somewhat sweet. However, deep down, I think he had a secret hate for Addie. He knew that he was never good enough in Addie’s eyes, and that Addie only loved Jewel, and I think this haunted him. Honestly, when he tried burning down the barn and burning Addie in her coffin, I thought it was a little extreme to send him off to a mental institution. However, it was interesting to see Darl’s sanity change once he knew he was being sent away. Finally, I believe that Cash’s lost tools represent how he lost a part of himself (not to mention his own leg,) during the course of the journey and Addie’s death. Then, I think that Jewel giving away his horse shows that he was secretly the real one who cared for Addie.
In conclusion, since most of the characters’ true desires and personalities are negative and selfish, I believe that the truth of the Bundren family really is just as rotten as the corpse of Addie.
Throughout this novel, each family member shows the reader an image of despair or weakness of character, but they all demonstrate this in different ways. In Jewel’s case, everything he had ever wanted is stripped away from him when he is forced to give up his horse, which was his pride and love. Cash also has his material possessions taken from him, but it is his tools that are washed away. These tools signified his inclination to work, and without them his aspirations cannot be fulfilled. Darl also loses something in a sense, but instead of a physical object, Darl shows the reader dissolution by mentally breaking down, and giving up all sanity. Anse demonstrates the weakness of his character, and what he truly desired by not even waiting 10 days after Addie’s death before getting a new wife, which is potentially the worst example of the breakdown of a person’s bonds in this book. The reader is shown an image of despair with Anse betraying his wife and family, while wasting money on his false teeth. Vardaman is overwhelmed by the misery of his mother’s death, and because of this he becomes hysteric. Lastly Dewey Dell’s desire is to have an abortion, yet she cannot even do this. These hopes and desires the characters have are stripped away from them and replaced with misery, and a bleak future.
ReplyDeleteWhen Addie dies, each family member reveals their desires. All of these desires result in failure, which causes despair and dissolution. For example, Anse's false teeth and new wife show that Anse very quickly copes with his wife's death by finding replacements to make him happy. This does not necessarily bring closure to Addie's death, this just makes a new beginning for Anse. However, throughout the book, he does make very stupid decisions. For example, in an attempt to treat Cash's leg, he pours cement over it (for a cast), which will prevent Cash from walking ever again. He skips over his grief by very quickly replacing Addie with false teeth and a new wife. Dewey Dell's failed abortion shows that she, like Anse, also wants to move on from her past. If Dewey Dell has the baby, the child will forever be a reminder of Lafe. This shows that Dewey Dell wants to move on from her pass as quickly as possible, and is willing to also undergo selfish actions to do so. Both Anse and Dewey Dell are selfish and cowardly and seem unwilling to face the truth. As the novel progresses, Darl's 'madness' also progresses. For example, when Darl is at the barn, he is so crazy, he burns it down. When the family arrives in Jefferson, they force him to enter a mental institution because Gillespie was going to sue the family over the burnt barn. As a result of Addie's death, Darl has become more and more crazy throughout the book. This is Darl's way of coping with his grief, and it completely changes who he is over the ten days that the novel progresses. I liked how this kind of relates to the beginning of the novel when Jewel walks straight through the house and Darl goes around it. Darl avoids the problem (by going insane), and Jewel faces it head on. The despair that Darl faces is foreshadowed in the beginning of the novel. Each family member goes through their own despair after Addie's death, and everyone deals with it (usually to cope for their grief over Addie) in different ways.
ReplyDeleteWhen thinking of southern families people assume they are closer and have a stronger bond than any other families. The Bundrens, however, are the exact opposite. as they appear to be this sweet loving family mourning for the death of Addie, they also become preoccupied with their own needs and wants that they become completely selfish. Anse is the best example of this. he appeared to be selfless as he sold everything the family had in order to bury Addie in Jefferson where she asked to be buried. However, seeing as how he has taken money and used it to marry another woman just moments after his late wife's burial shows his lack of empathy. the family turns to despair as Jewel as become nothing with the loss of his horse as has Cash with his tools being washed away leaving him showing his vulnerability without them. Cash is also so emotionally destroyed by the recent events that by the end of the novel he is unable to form complete sentences and shows the reader how mentally inept he has become as well as emotionally scarred as he is unable to even process what has occurred. Darl shows how he is dissolute by being blinded with rage and misery as he burns down a barn and therefore spends his days in a mental hospital. Vardaman, the youngest of Addie's children, seems to not be able to grasp the concept of what has happened and is now bonkers. Dewey Dell comes off to be the worst story out of everyone. she is a young misguided girl who longs to have an abortion no matter what price she must pay. After giving herself up to another man she is left dumbfounded and still with child. all aspirations these family members had were taken away from them with the death of Addie leaving a future filled with despair and agony.
ReplyDeleteAs I read this novel, I continued to wonder when Addie's voice would come in. After all, she is the only person in the novel who is literally dying, and the novel is titled "As I Lay Dying." However, the "I" in the title refers to each family member because each of the family members show themselves to be rotten and dying as well.
ReplyDeleteFirst, there is Anse, my least favorite character in the novel. He continues to say that he is going to great lengths to fulfill his wife's dying wish. One might think that this is an admirable and romantic act. However, the way that I interpreted it, I think that Anse was just using this to barter with himself. In a way, he was telling himself, "If I get this over with, then I can get my false teeth and a new wife." He doesn't care about what anyone else wants -- he sells Jewel's horse, the one that Jewel worked during the night to be able to pay for, and he takes money from Dewey Dell to buy his new teeth. Then, he gets a new wife immediately after burying his deceased wife. Overall Anse is just a scummy person.
Next, Dewey Dell is manipulated by the employee at the pharmacy. Since Lafe will most likely not help her out with the child, she will be a single mother. This will be an especially difficult situation because the family barely had enough leftover food scraps to feed Jewel's horse, let alone food to another person. This leaves Dewey Dell with a desperate future.
In addition, there is no doubt that Darl's journey through the novel is a destructive one. Not only does he abandon Addie's coffin in the river, but he also sets fire to the barn where the coffin is inside. Darl's actions lead him to be put into a mental institution. Furthermore, Cash begins his part in the novel by elaborating on his construction of Addie's coffin. However, by the end of the novel Cash doesn't say much. His voice is silenced.
Lastly, the loss of Jewel's horse is even worse than the loss of his mother. Unlike Addie, who Jewel never expressed his love to, Jewel loves his horse. It represents his hard work since he bought it on his own, demonstrating Jewel's independent nature. Having that taken away from him was like losing himself.
So, the journey together destructs each family member, and their futures are destined for further failure and ruin.
While striving to fulfill their matriarch's final wish, the Bundrens must deal with their own losses and desires. Their mother offered different things to all of them, loving only Jewel. Cash deals with Addie's death in the fashion with which a carpenter would deal with a house to be built; meticulously. Jewel invests his feelings into his horse, and loses his composure when it is bartered away by Anse, who handle's Addies passing by replacing her immediately with a new wife and false teeth (reminiscent of a would-be mid life crisis of sorts.) Darl tries his best to treat the situation with love and emotion, the way a normal human would react, but his innate sixth sense seems to drive him mad in the end, and the reader watches him spiral out of any semblance of control. Vardaman, in a similar fashion, turns hysterical when his mother dies and his waterfall of constantly tumbling words, trying to rationalize the loss but barely grasping what has happened at all. Dewey Dell chooses to focus on her abortion, knowing she could never be a mother and on some level, however dense she may be, knowing that starting a family would mean causing pain to new people just as Addie's death has caused pain to the Bundrens. In the end, the Bundrens are as rotten and dead as Addie's corpse, separated from the life they once lived by insurmountable borders like Darl's institutionalization, Anse's new life, and more than anything, the loss of their mother, who was one of their last threads of unity.
ReplyDeleteThroughout Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying," we are bombarded with stories that are brimming with despair and disillusionment. Through the words and thoughts of the narrators, these feelings leech into our minds, and lead us to question our own lives as well. Of all the characters, Anse is the toughest to place in relation to the others because he succeeds. His deepest desire is for his own teeth, and to have a new wife to do his bidding. In the end, he gets all he desires, at the expense of his children. However, his desires add to the overall disillusion and despair of the novel. Anse's desires are for himself alone, without any regard for his children causes the reader despair and disillusionment about the very nature of life and reward. Dewey Dell on the other hand is one of the best examples of despair and disillusionment. In the end, her naivety robs her of her ten dollars, her dignity, and her chance for an abortion. We feel her despair as she pleads with Anse, and and her disillusionment with the repetition of' I know it won't work. ' Just as Dewey Dell's greatest and only desire was torn away, so were the older Bundren children's. Jewels horse was heartlessly sold away by Anse, and with it went all his hard work and self determination. Cash looses his leg and health over the trip, his and his beloved tools and hope for a gramophone. It would seem that eldest boys, with the best ability to work hard and succeed financially prove to be in vain. Neither devotion nor labor can protect the characters from what life had in store for them. Even the minor characters, like Tull and Cora, fail to compassionately help the Bundren family. both denounce their morality, paternal care, or rudely employ the boys right in the midst of Addie's passing. Others prey upon the family, like Mosley most especially, add to the burdens of the family. But Darl in the end is the last nail in the coffin of despair and disillusionment. He is the favorite, most level headed, philosophical narrator, open to questioning the grander purpose and inner feelings of the characters around him. Yet, by the end, he unravels, burns down a barn, gets carted away to a grimy mental institution, and looses his precious sanity. We cannot help but feel for the demise of the Bundren family, and question the karmic justice of life itself.
ReplyDeleteThe novel's progression reveals the darker side of each character which has been formed from a troublesome upbringing or past. The reader is introduced to the story of a family working diligently to prepare a burial for their mother according to the way the way she wanted. Initially, as many did, I believed that the novel would be an inspirational story of overcoming the difficulties of the journey to Jefferson and eventually concluding in an ending where the family has become tightly knit together because of the obstacles they have defeated. However, as the story continues, something quite different occurs. Through each successive narration, it becomes evident that Addie's death has taken an emotional toll on each member of the family. We also learn that Addie's and Anse's marriage has been a serious problem since the birth of Cash. Addie declares how having children restricted her freedom. Their marriage was polluted with secrets, distrust, affairs, and secret indignation towards each other. It is revealed that Anse has had the desire to get new teeth and apparently a new wife with a swift acquisition after Addie's burial. This broken union between them is the core of all of the emotional and mental trauma that each Bundren child is bombarded with and forced to deal with. As the dreary journey wears on, Cash begins to struggle with forming coherent and complete thoughts. Darl has been declared insane, Dewey Dell has hidden a pregnancy and attempted abortion, and Vardaman is faced with the loss of his only friend in Darl. The overall brokenness in the family that has proved to be prevalent in each character's life is the result of the rotten marriage that it all started with. Instead of the novel being a success story for a family who wanted to satisfy their mother's dying wish, it is instead a novel that reveals the consequences of a marriage rotten in all aspects.
ReplyDeleteAt the beginning of the story, the family definitely seems like a somewhat normal group of people, but as the plot progresses we see how Addie's death brings out the worst in each character. The first problem that we see is that Addie never wanted any of her kids, and didn't even believe that she loved any of them. Although we are told of each character's problem as we read on, Addie's death is what truly pushes each character's situation off the cliff. Cash physically becomes hurt while trying to transport Addie's coffin across the river. Cash will never be the same after his injury, and begins to think in an odd manner. We also find out that Dewey Dell's pregnancy was kept hidden for the most part, and that she even tried to get an abortion but failed in doing so. Darl and Vardaman are affected together, as Vardaman is separated by the only person that he truly had a connection with in Darl. Although Darl was already a bit unstable from his time in war, we saw that he was what kept us, the reader, informed about what was truly going on throughout the story. However, Addie's death definitely impacted Darl the worst as he becomes legally insane, and must be sent away in order to be safe. The despair and dissolution in all of this is that the family was only trying to complete Addie's final request, and instead of giving them a sense of comfort, it tore the family apart and separated them, instead of bringing them together in a time of need.
ReplyDeleteIn the novel, As I lay Dying we are able to see the progression of the despair in this novel through the characters and their stories. Anse tries to make people believe that he is being such a good husband by honoring his wife's wishes, but then he goes out and marries another women right after he buries his wife. He also takes money that the family cannot afford to waste to buy himself fake teeth. It was very sad to think that he would allow himself to move on so quickly and not even allow his family to fully grieve before he tries to replace Addie, which shows his lack of compassion. Dewey Dell's failed abortion is only going to lead to a bad life for her she is going to be a single mother with no support. her family is already extremely poor with barley enough to support themselves, so this is clearly not an ideal situation to bring a baby into especially because she is so naive and will have no idea how to care for the infant. Darl's story shows the most depsir because he seemed to be the character who understood what was going on and he ends up completely breaking down and losing his sanity. It shows how the family just kept being dealt bad hands. Also Jewel losing his horse was the worst thing that could have happened to him. That horse represented everything he had worked for and cared about, so losing it was like losing everything he did that was meaningful to him in his life. All of the horrible things that occurred within the Bundren family was just as bad as Addie's rotting corpse and some of it they brought on themselves.
ReplyDeleteLike any person, each member of the Bundren family deals with grief and loss in their own way. Vardaman begins questioning things, and becomes confused about what is going on. Jewel removes himself, and I feel as though Dewey Dell almost regresses. When Addie dies, each family members wishes comes to the forefront. Anse does not seem to waste any time mourning the loss of his wife. It seems like he is focused on one thing; his new teeth. Also, he goes right on to find a new wife. Not only is it disrespectful, but it shows his total lack of compassion and respect for his wife. I’m not sure if he is not smart or oblivious to reality, but he tries to heal Cash’s leg by pouring cement on it. Although he could be handling his grief in this way, he is still not going to be happy. He may think that these new teeth and wife will make him happy, but he is going to be in the same place he was before. For someone who seemed to love his wife from the very start, it confused me to see him acting like this. In some way, death changed him, or maybe just brought out his true colors. From the very beginning, Dewey Dell’s pregnancy seemed to be a mistake. Her desire for an abortion shows how she wants a clean slate. I think she can now realize what a mistake she has made. Dewey Dell and Anse are trying to start fresh. After losing his mother, Darl seems to handle the situation relatively well. However, as the grief sets in he slowly starts to lose it. He burns down the barn in a fit of anger with his mother in it. Since he ends up in a metal institution, one may question how accurate his narration was prior to this. Did the grief do this to him? The desires of each family member clearly shows their despair.
ReplyDeleteThe Bundren Family is just as rotten as Addie’s corpse. When Addie dies, the readers sees what was really important to each member of the family. Although it may just be a response to the death they have all experienced, it seems as though each member of the family goes bad in one way or another. Anse’s selfish side is 100% evident when he finds a new wife right after burying Addie. He wants to move on so he can be happy and fails to mourn or make sure his children are in a happy place. Dewey Dell tries escaping her past by trying (and failing) once again to get an abortion. Darl subconsciously forgets his past when he goes mad. Jewel’s selfish side is evident as well. He cares more about the loss of his horse than his mother. For a family that did so much to fulfill someone’s dying wish, they certainly did not get any good karma in return, except for Anse, and by the end it is clear that every member of the Bundren family would have had a much better fate if they hadn’t taken Addie to Jefferson.
ReplyDeleteThe Bundren family seemed to have good intentions when trying to grant Addie's dying wish, but they were so consumed by their own lives and problems it did not seem that any of them even mourned the loss of their mother, or in Anse's case, his wife. Maybe focusing on other issues was their way of coping as denial is a stage of grief, however it seems unlikely that every member of the family would be stuck in denial at the same time. Though they do care enough to grant Addie her dying wish, none of them really seem thrilled to do so and in the process of granting it, they all develop new problems and end up making things worse for themselves, except maybe Anse who found himself a new wife as soon as Addie is in the ground. This action in itself seems awful, as Anse shows no signs of mourning after Addie's death, but only relief that the task is finished once she is finally buried. It was very inconsiderate of him to do something like, not even checking with the children to see how they were doing and how they were doing with the death of their mother. In granting their mother their final wish, the children become obsessed with their own problems and though they tried to do something good for their mother, eventually it only tore the family apart. A prime example of this is Darl having to go to a mental hospital, which separated him from Vardaman whom had a very close relationship with him. Cash injures his leg permanently while carrying the coffin across the river. Dewey Dell has basically screwed up her life by getting pregnant as her family is already dirt poor and she has no one else to support her and her child. She is too naive to even raise a child and from what I can see about Anse he is going to be too self absorbed in his new relationship to help out Dewey Dell. Last is Jewel, who showed more emotion and grief over his horse than he did over his own mother. All in all the Bundren family showed their true colors after their mother's passing. Though I do believe that the family was just trying to deal with the death in their own way, Faulkner portrayed them as very selfish and overall a broken family.
ReplyDeleteEach character of As I Lay Dying has their own desires and therefore has to deal with different things in different ways; however not every one of the characters show despair at the end of their journey. Darl definitely does prove to be as rotten as Addie's corpse because he mentally cracks and ends up burning down an innocent man's barn. I believe that Darl desires acceptance, or at least to be understood, by others however in trying to achieve this he only becomes more of an outcast in society. He starts the novel by being able to relate to the audience (being accepted) and then as the novel progresses he becomes more and more irrational. Cash desires consistency and logic. He worked on the coffin until his mother died, always focusing on the job at hand without having to think about his feelings. Once he had to deal with those emotions he became a more stable person that the readers could rely on for accurate information. Cash doesn't show despair or dissolution but hope for the future. Dewey Dell desired an abortion which is something she never came close to. She tried as hard as she could to gain this but couldn't. This shows complete despair because Dewey Dell even had sex again just to get this abortion only to be fooled by yet another man. Anse proves to be rotten but he overcomes his obstacles and gets what he wants. Although it was completely disrespectful to get married so soon after his wife's death, his wife hated him to her core and she never showed him any love. You can't blame him for having already moved on when there was nothing there in the first place. He even got his new teeth, which he had wanted for so long so he could taste God's food. This is a portrayal of hope in a time of grief. Anse finally got what he wanted even if it makes him a bad person. There was no disillusionment there either. We knew what Anse's characterization was from the start of the novel and he just lived up to those initial thoughts. The desires of the Bundren family were not all acceptable and not all of them led to a rotten ending; some showed signs of hope after all that had happened.
ReplyDeleteAs i mentioned in my last response, the family's task of burying Addie kept them all focused on a task that temporarily gave them something in common. But as they continue on their journey, this facade of togetherness decays just like their rotting mother. In the end the reader sees that this family is not a family at all, they all want something different.
ReplyDeleteCash remained pretty emotionally constant throughout the novel. He never complained about his leg, which ironically leaves his leg left to fester and decay. He is physically rotting like Addie. Darl is literally burning up inside with his desire to be understood. The kid is lighting buildings on fire, something is wrong there. Dewey Dell is 16 and pregnant, this family is a disgusting piece of fruit that started out rotten and the longer it stayed on the vine the more brown and demented it became. Best case scenario is detach from the vine and throw it away before it ruins the rest of the crop. At the end we see the family as this. Detached, but not for the better, they're going to the trash. If this doesn't scream despair then i dont know what does.
Beyond Addie's literal death, we can see several other things dying in between the lines of the story. But beyond the major death in the story, we can analyze and see that there are a few more figurative casualties that we face. For example, we see the disintegration of the family bond in the Bundren family. In fact, Addie's death may have been the final sense of connection the Bundrens feel, all acting together for the same cause: respect for their mother. However, Anse seems to have seen Addie as dead for a while, and killed his relationship ages before time did. With no time in between, Anse just finds another "Mrs. Bundren" as if his fish just died and he had to get a new one before his kids can notice. Even throughout the novel, we see family members betraying and holding back information from each other. Dewey Dell, for instance, is having a child, which she tried to avoid, but even when it is too late to turn back, she cannot admit it to her family. This may be to try to protect the new not-Bundren from experiencing the awful family life that his/her mother had to, and begin with a clean slate. The death of one bad family fuels the birth of a new healthy one. (this answer applies here, too, so...)
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